The &os; Project $FreeBSD$ 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 The &os; Documentation Project &tm-attrib.freebsd; &tm-attrib.ibm; &tm-attrib.ieee; &tm-attrib.intel; &tm-attrib.sparc; &tm-attrib.general; The release notes for &os; &release.current; contain a summary of the changes made to the &os; base system on the &release.branch; development line. This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since the last release, as well as significant changes to the &os; kernel and userland. Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented. This document contains the release notes for &os; &release.current;. It describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of &os;. It also provides some notes on upgrading from previous versions of &os;. The &release.type; distribution to which these release notes apply represents the latest point along the &release.branch; development branch since &release.branch; was created. Information regarding pre-built, binary &release.type; distributions along this branch can be found at . ]]> The &release.type; distribution to which these release notes apply represents a point along the &release.branch; development branch between &release.prev; and the future &release.next;. Information regarding pre-built, binary &release.type; distributions along this branch can be found at . ]]> This distribution of &os; &release.current; is a &release.type; distribution. It can be found at or any of its mirrors. More information on obtaining this (or other) &release.type; distributions of &os; can be found in the Obtaining &os; appendix to the &os; Handbook. ]]> All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before installing &os;. The errata document is updated with late-breaking information discovered late in the release cycle or after the release. Typically, it contains information on known bugs, security advisories, and corrections to documentation. An up-to-date copy of the errata for &os; &release.current; can be found on the &os; Web site. This section describes the most user-visible new or changed features in &os; since &release.prev;. In general, changes described here are unique to the &release.branch; branch unless specifically marked as &merged; features. Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after &release.prev;, new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades. They may also list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering practices. Clearly the release notes cannot list every single change made to &os; between releases; this document focuses primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major architectural improvements. A new API called cpuset has been added for thread to CPU binding and CPU resource grouping and assignment. The &man.cpuset.1; userland utility has been added to allow manipulation of processor sets. The &man.ddb.4; kernel debugger now has an output capture facility. Input and output from &man.ddb.4; can now be captured to a memory buffer for later inspection using &man.sysctl.8; or a textdump. The new capture command controls this feature. The &man.ddb.4; debugger now supports a simple scripting facility, which supports a set of named scripts consisting of a set of &man.ddb.4; commands. These commands can be managed from within &man.ddb.4; or with the use of the new &man.ddb.8; utility. More details can be found in the &man.ddb.4; manual page. The kernel now supports a new textdump format of kernel dumps. A textdump provides higher-level information via mechanically generated/extracted debugging output, rather than a simple memory dump. This facility can be used to generate brief kernel bug reports that are rich in debugging information, but are not dependent on kernel symbol tables or precisely synchronized source code. More information can be found in the &man.textdump.4; manual page. [&arch.amd64;, &arch.i386;] The BTX kernel used by the boot loader has been changed to invoke BIOS routines from real mode. This change makes it possible to boot &os; from USB devices. [&arch.amd64;, &arch.i386;] A new gptboot boot loader has been added to support booting from a GPT labeled disk. A new boot command has been added to &man.gpt.8;, which makes a GPT disk bootable by writing the required bits of the boot loader, creating a new boot partition if required. &merged; [&arch.amd64;, &arch.i386;] The &man.wpi.4; driver has been added to support the Intel 3945 Wireless LAN Controller. BSD-licensed versions of &man.ar.1; and &man.ranlib.1;, based on libarchive, have replaced the GNU Binutils versions of these utilities. &man.traceroute.8; now has the ability to print the AS number for each hop with the new -a switch; a new -A option allows selecting a particular WHOIS server. &man.traceroute6.8; now supports a -U flag to send probe packets with no upper-layer protocol, rather than the usual UDP probe packets. AMD has been updated from 6.0.10 to 6.1.5. &merged; awk has been updated from 1 May 2007 release to the 23 October 2007 release. &merged; CVS has been updated from 1.11.17 to 1.11.22. IPFilter has been updated from 4.1.23 to 4.1.28. less has been updated from v408 to v416. ncurses has been updated from 5.6-20061217 to 5.6-20080209. OpenPAM has been updated from the Figwort release to the Hydrangea release. &merged; sendmail has been updated from 8.14.1 to 8.14.2. &merged; The timezone database has been updated from the tzdata2007h release to the tzdata2008a release. &merged; [&arch.i386;, &arch.amd64;] Beginning with &os; 6.2-RELEASE, binary upgrades between RELEASE versions (and snapshots of the various security branches) are supported using the &man.freebsd-update.8; utility. The binary upgrade procedure will update unmodified userland utilities, as well as unmodified GENERIC or SMP kernels distributed as a part of an official &os; release. The &man.freebsd-update.8; utility requires that the host being upgraded have Internet connectivity. An older form of binary upgrade is supported through the Upgrade option from the main &man.sysinstall.8; menu on CDROM distribution media. This type of binary upgrade may be useful on non-&arch.i386;, non-&arch.amd64; machines or on systems with no Internet connectivity. Source-based upgrades (those based on recompiling the &os; base system from source code) from previous versions are supported, according to the instructions in /usr/src/UPDATING. Upgrading &os; should, of course, only be attempted after backing up all data and configuration files.